Mozilla Foundation cuts staff and eliminates advocacy division, Apple stays silent on allegations of threatening workers over remote work talk

Greetings, comms pros! Let’s look at a few news stories from the past week and see what we can learn from them.

1. Mozilla Foundation lays off 30% of staff while also cutting its advocacy function

The Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit wing of the company that makes the Firefox internet browser, is cutting jobs and getting rid of its advocacy function amid “a relentless onslaught of change”.

Mozilla Foundation CCO Brandon Borman affirmed the layoffs in a memo to staff.

According to Tech Crunch :

“The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all. That unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward,” read the statement shared with TechCrunch.

After publication, Borrman told TechCrunch that “advocacy is still a central tenet of Mozilla Foundation’s work and will be embedded in all the other functional areas,” without providing specifics.

Mozilla is known for advocating for privacy and inclusion on the internet. This move brings some of that ethos into question going forward.

For comms pros, it’s worth asking — what do you do when your company cuts a big part of your identity as a way of remaining stable? There’s no right answer, but one of the solutions is to dive headfirst into employee experience as it ties into brand identity. Show your employees they matter and hedge that in messaging that proves you’re still the great place to work they were onboarded with originally.

Organizational identities change — that’s part of business. But you can remind people that the cultural positives they relate to are the same — that’s how you communicate your way through these types of major shifts.

2 . Amazon CEO says RTO process isn’t a pretext for layoffs

Amazon chief Andy Jassy denied that the company’s RTO mandate wasn’t intended as a method of covertly cutting jobs, but instead as a method of making the company’s culture stronger by having employees in the office five days a week.

According to Reuters:

“A number of people I’ve seen theorized that the reason we were doing this is, it’s a backdoor layoff, or we made some sort of deal with city or cities,” said Jassy, according to a transcript of the meeting reviewed by Reuters.

“I can tell you both of those are not true. You know, this was not a cost play for us. This is very much about our culture and strengthening our culture,” he said.

It’s interesting to see the head of a company as big as Amazon address the speculation around an RTO process head-on. RTO programs should always consider culture as a guidepost for both the rollout and communication of the initiative.

Any well-done RTO process needs to follow a checklist of sorts to find success. Earlier this year, we outlined RTO success points. The best RTOs can get off on the right foot by doing the following:

• Continuously updating a single-source site like your intranet, changing language from referring to ‘new’ ways of working to simplifying how you work.
• Championing clarity and consistency as foundational principles of leadership comms.
• Educating and enabling managers to carry the message.
• Message orchestration and cascading.

It’s not enough to just say that culture matters — you need to show it in action. Once you call your people back, give them reasons to appreciate their time in the office, like more upskilling initiatives with colleagues and face time with leaders. There are benefits to working in the office — comms pros should highlight them, allow leaders to talk about them, and make them a central part of company culture beyond lip service.

3. NLRB files complaint against Apple for threatening employees who talked about compensation and work-from-home benefits

The National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against tech giant Apple, alleging that the organization threatened repercussions against employees who talked about their pay or working from home.

MSN reported that according to accounts from former workers at the company, Apple employees were allegedly threatened when talking about bonuses, ordered to delete a social media post about how other employees could continue working remotely, and forced to stop mentioning their pay on internal comms platforms. Another, software engineer Cher Scarlett claimed that she was forced out of her role for creating an internal survey for employee compensation. Apple has yet to comment on the allegations.

When employees feel they’re in a more open environment, they’re able to be their authentic selves and more likely to stay. In 2023, we covered the topic of job-hopping and how to combat it. In that piece, we cited a Flexjobs survey that stated 62% of employees cited toxic work environments as one of their top reasons to leaving a company, followed by pay at 59%. If your employees can’t talk about things they want to improve or their pay, there’s a good chance they won’t stick around, and those numbers prove it.

Sure, Apple is one of the biggest-name corporations on the planet. But that doesn’t mean that the same rules don’t apply to employee satisfaction.

Outreach via surveys and other touchpoints can help communicators gather information from employees about how they feel on topics like compensation, benefits and more. Running that info up the ladder to leaders can then affect change. Encourage your people to share their views. If you stifle them, you’re sowing the seeds for discontent and poor culture.

4. How about some good news?

• Jordan became the first country in the world verified as having eliminated leprosy.
• The sheet music for a lost Chopin composition was found in a New York City museum.
• A wooden tool from the Bronze Age was found in a trench in England.
• Ragan Training is great for communications pros to find inspiration and resources.
• You should be rewarded for your work. Find out how to earn an award here!

Have a great weekend comms all-stars!

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports, a good pint and ’90s trivia night.